MYSTIC, Conn. - Artifacts of a battle between an American Indian tribe and English settlers, a confrontation that helped shape early American history, have sat for years beneath manicured lawns and children's swing sets in a Connecticut neighborhood.

A project to map the battlefields of the Pequot War is bringing those musket balls, gunflints and arrowheads into the sunlight for the first time in centuries. It's also giving researchers insight into the combatants and the land on which they fought, particularly the Mystic hilltop where at least 400 Pequot Indians died in a 1637 massacre by English settlers.

Historians say the attack was a turning point in English warfare with native tribes. It nearly wiped out the powerful Pequots and showed other tribes that the colonists wouldn't hesitate to use methods that some consider genocide. snip..

The researchers have already found remnants of English metal uniform buttons, bandoliers and other items that might help mark where settlers marched, camped before the attack and retreated afterward. The artifacts are being cataloged at the museum and will be kept and displayed there.

Historians say the attack was a turning point in English warfare with native tribes. It nearly wiped out the powerful Pequots and showed other tribes that the colonists wouldn't hesitate to use methods that some consider genocide.

That's a revisionist "historian" way of putting it.

Or perhaps this was simply a battle fought in a time when men were men and sought to destroy their enemies, lest they come back seeking vengeance.

The Pequot Indians, once a powerful tribe, controlled all of Connecticut east of the Connecticut River. The tribe numbered 2,500, and its name meant "Destroyer." After they were defeated by colonists in the Pequot War of 1637, the Pequots' influence diminished significantly, and many of them were sold into slavery. In 1655, some Pequots were released and resettled onto a strip of land near New Haven. Although he tribe gradually dispersed, those that remained in Connecticut were forced to share their land with great numbers of English settlers. By 1735, the colonists had encroached so severely on the Indians' land, cutting down their timber and stealing their crops, that the Pequots petitioned Governor Joseph Talcott for help. None was forthcoming, and the Pequot population continued to dwindle, so that by 1850 the number of full- blooded Pequot Indians was down to forty. The above graphic and copy from here.

Thanks to the Free Republic's resident scholar SunkenCiv for alerting me to this story...

The RevWar/Colonial History/General Washington ping list...

6
posted on 07/13/2010 11:26:33 AM PDT
by Pharmboy
(The Stone Age did not end because they ran out of stones...)

The Pequot War convinced several colonies to band together for mutual protection from the French and Indians. They formed The New England Confederation. It lasted about 40 years. During the English Civil Wars, the colonies were on their own; no help came from the mother country. French foreign policy was one of containment of the prosperous English in North America. It is why after 150 years, the colonies were still huddled along the Atlantic seaboard.

The confederation was something of a precursor to the colonies’ response to another threat in the mid 1770s.

13
posted on 07/13/2010 12:03:14 PM PDT
by Jacquerie
(Tyrants should fear for their personal safety.)

“A project to map the battlefields of the Pequot War is bringing those musket balls, gunflints and arrowheads into the sunlight for the first time in centuries. It’s also giving researchers insight into the combatants and the land on which they fought, particularly the Mystic hilltop where at least 400 Pequot Indians died in a 1637 massacre by English settlers.”

I read somewhere that the English Colonists at this time and through King Philip’s War in the 1660’s, used matchlock muskets and the Indians used flintlocks. The settlers had less use for firearms than the Native Americans who valued them as a tool to obtain furs and hides for trade with the Europeans, and, as such, purchased the more effective weapon at the time.

The War was supposedly started by the murder of a questionable character, John Stone, a privateer or pirate, and slaver, by the Western Niantics

“In the same year, John Stone was murdered by the Pequots on the Connecticut River. It may be that he was thought to be a Dutchman, and one of the murderers of Tatobem. Stone was known to the Bay Colony authorities as a privateer and rogue and may have provoked the Indians who claim to have acted in self-defense, but he soon became another statistic in the Colony’s list of Pequot “crimes.”

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.